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Friday, May 16, 2014

Netflix This Movie! Vol. 77

If you watch everything we recommend this week, you will be a better person and you will have seen Bed of Roses.

Adam Riske:Bed of Roses (1996, dir. Michael Goldenberg)
Adam: I live on a planet called reality, where movies like you don't exist!Bed of Roses: When you've got material like this, who wants the truth? Don't you think I'm worth the risk?
Adam: Yes, but I'm scared. It's like you're the perfect blend of insane and sweet.Bed of Roses: Every once in a while, we're all entitled to a little perfection.
Adam: I love you, Bed of Roses.

Heath Holland: You Only Live Twice (1967, dir. Lewis Gilbert) The fifth film in the James Bond series, You Only Live Twice is the one that starts with a space shuttle getting eaten by a bigger space shuttle, which can only really be followed up by killing James Bond. Luckily that's exactly what they do before the opening credits roll. You Only Live Twice is also the Bond film that's set almost entirely in Japan and stars Donald Pleasence as Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. Strangely, this is one of the Bond films that I've only seen a few times and seems new to me every single time I watch it. It also has one of my favorite title songs, performed here by Nancy Sinatra. Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond.

JB:Maximum Overdrive (1986, dir. Stephen King) Yes, for the first time ever, I am recommending a film IRONICALLY. F This Movie! has a history with this one. Patrick and I discussed it on our award-winning "Worst Horror Movies" podcast, and I devoted a "Shitting on the Classics" column to it, writing, "[Maximum Overdrive] features bad acting, amateurish special effects, ludicrous dialogue, mean-spirited nonsense, and a plot lifted from Night of the Living Dead. It might fall into the category of “so bad, it is good,” but this film is not “good” bad. It is not even “bad” bad. It happens to be “shit” bad. “Shitty shit shit bad shit bad bad bad bad” bad. The film’s dumb premise: all the machines in the world go crazy and start killing people. In one of the film’s more risible sequences, a murderous Coke machine magically develops the ability to shoot its soda cans at cannonball speeds. In another gruesome scene, a rogue, driverless steamroller flattens an entire little league team. Someone named Bryan over at the IMDB wrote that the steamroller bit was his favorite scene, so we can all start praying for Bryan’s soul. King now admits he was “coked out of his mind” when he made the film. If you have ever been curious to see a film from a director coked out of his mind, check out Maximum Overdrive." Cool AC/DC song, though. And now it is available on NETFLIX INSTANT!

Patrick: God Bless America(2011, dir. Bobcat Goldthwait) I saw Bobcat Goldthwait's new horror movie Willow Creek this week at the Chicago Critics Film Festival (reviews to start next week!) and it put me in the mood to rewatch some of his earlier stuff. This is his most recent movie prior to Willow Creek, starring Joel Murray as a guy who gets a death sentence and decides to start killing off reality TV stars and rude douchebags and everyone he sees as ruining society -- basically the best stuff in Falling Down expanded to feature length. My issues with God Bless America are still my issues -- the satire is totally blunt and the characters speechify to express what Goldthwait wants to say -- but it's so rare that we get comedies this edgy and angry that it deserves to be seen and talked about. Goldthwait finds a way to make the movies he wants to make without compromising, and God Bless America is certainly uncompromising.